RESP: He was a good bowler in his day, y’ know, a road bowler 

INT: Right

RESP: In his day, and he was out, at the time of the trouble there was a lot more of them. And he was up, there was an ambush up in a place called Cristnalanbh one night and the English army came on him unawares. There was four of his comrades shot beside him. 

INT: Oh, oh

RESP: Yeah, so that was a big fright for that man. The other side of us now there was a McCarthy man from Balnadee and himself inside the ditch and they were surprised straight away when these fellas came on them with rubber soles on the shoes ya’d never hear them at all, the English army. And McCarthy ran that way and my father ran this way and he escaped. But they fired on them all. There was four of them shot. Four young men now all in their twenties.

INT: Oh. So that must have affected your father? 

RESP: It did, sure it was bound to!

INT: Did he talk to you much about it?

RESP: Not a whole lot, funny thing now, not a whole lot.  That was only one night now. I remember another night and he gave  all night inside a ditch up on the...oh I suppose for him the sunnier. There there was a boy by the name of Paddy Crowley, shot early in the  morning, Percival was the fella around here, he was the head man, an English Lay Officer and he shot one of the lads from Kilbrittain,  Paddy Crowley, there at the post office there in Kilbrittain, they still have it.  They waked him in Hurley Knees, what they called in Hurley Knees, it’s was big house.  He was waked there that night and my father was sent away up the road about a mile out from to scout, for a scout d’ y’ see? He was supposed to fire a shot or blow a whistle or something to warn them. So, yerra that was only, he’d several nights like that. And I’d say he didn’t stay home at all I think they were on the run.

LH10907 Story about English army shooting local men on the road during the War of Independence

RESP: While I was there I got a trip with An Bord Easc Mara to the World's Fishing Expedition in London and I’d a sister in Coventry, she was training as a nurse and I’d a brother on the buildings in London and when I arrived over there and seen him driving his brand new car, Anglia, and money to, that I thought, to throw around the place. I says "I'm giving" that was in the summer time and I says "one more herring season and if it doesn’t work out I’ll be ringing you up" and that’s exactly what happened. Bad herring season again, bad prices and I says, "To hell with this", even though I loved what I was doing, loved being at sea but you can't go on without money.

INT:	So you moved on

RESP:	So I moved onto London then

INT:	And would you get a job through him?

RESP:	Got a job through him but not what he was it, because it was winter time work was very scarce at least he had a flat there and I moved in with him and I’d seven pound going with me. And I came home again that year I put a few pound together between that and June and I came home and did the salmon fishing in July. And there was a bank strike that year and with a bit of fiddlin’ and diddlin’ and what have you, I ended up with forty two pound at the end of that season so I said "To hell with this" and I sold the nets and the whole lot and that was it. Never went at it ever since so I went back to London and put the head down and instead of digging holes I got myself a hammer and a saw and started shuttering like the rest of them and me wages jumped from £3 a day to £7 a day.

INT:	And how did you get on, how would you get work when you were over there?

RESP:	Oh networking, you didn’t work in the, you made phone calls, you met people in the pubs, "Whats the work like there?", and when you, after a while you made your name and your name was good, if there was work going they’d be looking for you and you wouldn’t be looking for it. We worked in price work gangs

INT:	And were they Irish contractors?

RESP:	Oh all Irish, that the misfortune I made is to stick with Irish subcontractors. I had no pension rights, no stamp, no nothing. It’s a big lump of. I did only four years, I turned in when I met me wife and she got pregnant and our son was born and we decided when he was a year old [we're] going home, not bringing him up in this country [Laughs]

LH21405 Deciding to emigrate to London in the 1960s

RESP: But actually I remember my friend next door saying to me that we must be really poor because my mam had to work, do you know that kind of way, I remember being really upset over this, like, "Oh my God, we’re poor 'cos she worked" but I think she worked because she liked it, but she used to get up in the mornings with us and we’d go to school, we went to school in Terenure, so we had to get the bus or get a lift, but she was always there when we came home, she didn’t work till 5 or 6 o'clock, it was probably half days and any of the holy days or anything like she’d have off sort of thing. She was always at home with us, like when we were there she was there. And she didn’t work during the summer holidays or anything like that. So I suppose it worked well for her from that point of view, it was a few bob for her. When we were bigger then, actually I suppose probably when we were working and that, there was a furniture place up in Tallaght that actually made office furniture, the chairs and that kind of thing, that she worked up there then kind of covering chairs and that. And like that it would’ve been part-time kind of mornings, I just think she liked to keep her hand in and keep busy. But that same friend who had said that to me, "You must be poor" obviously her mam must have been talking about it and that kind of thing 'cause she said, there was some comment passed, they said that something about, "You couldn’t keep your house clean when you were working" kind of thing, "Oh no we're poor and our house is manky" [Laughs] do you know that sort of way!

INT:  Can you remember how did you feel about your mum working though?

RESP: I have to say, I don’t think it had crossed my mind that there was something odd. [Talks to baby briefly] I have to say that there was nothing that bothered me at all about it and I didn’t even think I thought that it would’ve been for money or that it was just she worked, but she was always there for us so I don’t think that ever really was an issue. It was just when that was said to me, it was like, "God, maybe we are poor" that kind of thing [Laughter].

LH31203 Working mother in the 1980s

RESP: I remember my mother being so ashamed that we had to go to the St. Vincent de Paul and I remember going with her. And I remember I was saying to myself, "Oh my God I hope no one sees me and no one knows me." We were getting clothes and shoes from people and the heels were like, it's actually in style now but back then there was no way on this planet that I am going to wear those shoes, I'd rather go around barefooted.  So I suppose I said I had my pride as well, I was only a young child.

INT:  What age would you have been?

RESP: I would only have been about 10. I was so ashamed, and my mother said, "Just swallow your pride now and get on with it". Like my son is 11, he'd die. And I remember back then in those days you'd never give back cheek because you'd be murdered. But I had to go in and just get these things and I was going through the bags and thinking, "My God is this what life is going to be like now". Those were some of the harder times, there were other times you'd be ok. But I remember at Christmas time she'd always make an effort and always dress us up nice. I never remember much toys around the house or anything like that. I remember one time getting a record but I knew it was second hand, I knew it was a second hand record, a Paul Young tape, and that was it, that was all I got. There was no mad luxury bikes or anything like that, very scrimpy and poor, you know.

LH31401 Trip to the charity shop in the 1980s

RESP: We were all taking as many risks as we could. I was, at one stage I had to go borrow for a car, I had a loan for a car and it was three times what the car was worth because on a bank holiday weekend I knew that the money was going to be taken out on a Tuesday for the car and I’d go to the ATM machine and say right there’s three hundred pounds for the car and I have five hundred pounds left if I take out two hundred and twenty pounds on the Friday there won't be enough money for them to take out the three hundred pounds for the car so I’ll have another, I’ll have more money left for the rest of the week, for the rest of the month.

INT: This was drinking money was it?

RESP: This was drinking money. If I took more than I had or if I left less than they were looking for then they’d leave me with the rest of it.

INT: Oh they wouldn’t take some [of it]

RESP: [They wouldn’t] come along, if there wasn’t €300 or whatever it was there, if I left them with one pound less than they were looking for they wouldn’t take any of it and I’d have it and it didn’t dawn on me that I was going to have to pay it back ten fold or anything like that no I was in Galway for a weekend it was great, great fun. I needed money and I wasn’t going to borrow money from somebody else 'cause no one else had money.

LH31501 Taking risks with money in the 1990s

INT:     Were there facilities like sports clubs, drama clubs, music?

RESP:  No, we had a youth club, that was on once or twice a week over in Newtown Park so we'd all go over to that.

INT:     What did that offer ye?

RESP:  Just another place to hang around kind of thing. You know, now and again they might do a show but it wasn't that major. It was just another place to hang around rather than being out on the streets.

INT:     You really kind of entertained yourselves.

RESP:  That is it and you always found a bit of entertainment, you know, on a Saturday or Sunday the 15 or 12 of us would get on the bikes and cycle down to Greystones or Powerscourt Waterfall, we'd all just head off and that'd be it, we'd get our packed lunch and go, you know and would be just a laugh

INT:     Like something from Enid Blyton?

RESP:  Yeah, yeah except there was too bloody many of us!  [Laughter] But that was the likes of the things we done, cycled out to Bray or.

INT:     What did Bray think when it saw ye coming?

RESP:  Well I suppose we wouldn't have been the only crowd that would have done it. Some people wouldn't even have had the price of the bus fare so if they had the bike they were lucky, so that meant everyone could go together so there was no one looking for money.  You know, if the kids are going out now they are looking for €10 or €20, whereas we, you don't even ask for money when we were growing up because you probably wouldn't get it anyway. [Coughs] But everyone was the same so there was no on any different, you know that kind of way so

INT:     And did you get warnings from the parents about when to be home, when you went on these excursions?

RESP:  No because they knew we'd always come back before dark and that we all came back together, so there was nothing, because in the square where we were it was all of us together so

INT:     You had a tremendous group loyalty by the sounds of things

RESP:  Yeah yeah, everyone there and everyone looked after one another and it was great

INT:     Did that just come about naturally or did you have a few dominant personalities that would?

RESP:  No, no everyone just, "Well what will we do this weekend?" You know, during the summer, "What will we do?" "Oh we'll go down to Powerscourt on the bikes".  And we'd all be there waiting at say eight o'clock in the morning for everyone to come out with bikes and off we'd head, yeah, yeah

LH32402 Social life for Dublin teens in the 1980s

RESP: The other two grandparents, I don't know how they knew each other, and by the way the reason that I knew they knew each other was because I remember as my grandmother [name] was losing her faculties near the end and she had been conversing with me as a then young child, she'd made disparaging remarks [about grandfather] [...] I am quoting, "He sold his country for a bottle of stout". And I understand this is a reference to his having been a member of the RIC. So I know they knew each other, I understand they liked each other, they were friendly, but as with all friends she would have had something against him or perhaps observed something in him, as we do with all our friends

INT: A bit of dirt

RESP: Yeah a bit of dirt you'd be familiar with. So that is how I knew they knew each other

[...]

RESP: He had been a member of the RIC up until 1922 and finding himself in the town of Omagh in 1922 it was thought by all concerned if no doubt that he possibly should give up the police force, as he was a nationalist, Roscommon man, so he was probably more comfortable going back to Roscommon county, not his own hometown of Tulsk

[...]

RESP: My uncle Charlie, if we just digress for a minute, I am talking now about [uncle's name], I'm told, just to put a timescale onto it, he was a Blueshirt, an actual Blueshirt. I mean we always think this big socio-political mistake of the '30s you know, and surely nobody in our family was involved but, come on, let's face it if you are going to have an RIC as a grandfather, you know, it's not as bright and colourful to say he's with the old IRA or anything, but it's part of what we are about and part of what made our

INT: Yeah 

RESP: And it's all very important

PDF Transcript

LH33201 A grandfather in the RIC and an uncle in the Blueshirts

RESP:  I went into work one day and I used to cycle down to Saville Place, down that way like you went down that way and out onto the quays and I went down one morning, a beautiful sunny morning and I had a snow white blouse and a coloured skirt on like you know, and it was at the time, well I suppose the ships did come into the dock there you know, the bridge goes up and the ships come in. But if you were anyway late or that and the bridge went up, you could be late for work 'cos you couldn't cross, but if you were on time, if they were only starting to open it, you went into the CIE yard at the side and they'd wheel the bike across the lock gate and you'd walk across it [Laughs] and you'd be on time like that. But one of the fellows who was an accountant in Service had a friend in CIE and he used to go and visit him you know on and off if he wasn't busy and he said to me one day that he was walking along the corridor in CIE and he heard someone coming behind him and he turned around and it was a bull coming in [Laughs]

INT:     How did the bull get in there?

RESP: Well you see in those days they used to drive the cattle down to the boats, down the the B&I, and that's why I started to tell you about the cattle; I was going down one morning. I had this white blouse and a coloured skirt and the next thing the front mud guard shot up and activated the break and I went flying over the handle bars [Laughs] 

INT: Did you hurt yourself?

RESP: I landed like that, and all I could think of while I was flying through the air was, "I'm glad it is not a cattle market day", [laughter] I could still think like that like, "I'm glad there is not a cattle market". But I didn't hurt myself except both my hands were bruised there. But we used to get in there all right, get in over the side, over the CIE thing you know.

LH10604 Cattle in Dublin city centre in 1930s and 1940s

RESP: You know everyone killed a pig at that time, killed two pigs depending on the size of the family and when you killed a pig he used to save the barrell and pump it up and make a football [out] of it for us. 

INT: Excellent, and how often...

RESP: I remember him well. And my grandmother then we used to go in, it was on our way home from school and we used to go in and she'd have the bacon and cabbage down in the pot on the hearth and she'd give us the mug of the cabbage water and say, "Drink that into you then and run away home and don't be eating blackberries and haws on your way home and don't delay that will bring you home until your mother gets you your dinner". And if she hadn't the cabbage water and the dinner down, she'd give us a fist of raisins. 

INT: She'd give yous?

RESP: A fist of raisins. She had a big black apron pocket and she'd have raisins there for us and if she hadn't raisins she'd have white lozenges, they came loose at that time, they are called Silvermints now today.

INT: Yes I like the Silvermints

LH11101 Calling in to grandmother on the way home from school in the 1930s

RESP: My father thought Paddy was a very honest, decent, honourable man but my father was anti-marriage anyway so he didn't want any of us to get married and even my brothers

INT:   Why do you think was that?

RESP: I don't know, like he never thought marriage was a very good idea and he had all sorts of sayings and ideas and views about marriage.

INT:  What sort of things would he say or when would it come up?

RESP: Well he was a member of the Communist Party and because of how things went church-wise during 1916-18 that period when people were going out on ambushes and couldn't get absolution when they went to confession, there were only two priests, I think, in Dublin: in Church Street, Brother Albert and Brother Dominic, or Father Albert and Brother Dominic in Church Street would hear the lad's confession. So he was anti church.

INT:   Used he talk about these things to you when you were young?

RESP:  Yeah, oh yeah!

INT:   In the house?

RESP:  No, he'd take me for walks and he'd tell me on the walks all about this, and he used to say to me, like when I grew up my mother was a religious woman but she wasn't really overtly religious but she was a very religious woman but never talked about God or religion, we never said prayers in the house and we never had rosaries or anything like that. But my father used to say, "Don't mind you mother, you know, that is a load of rubbish." And I knew all the history of the Catholic Church going back centuries and it was all negative stuff, what he, he had read Das Kapital, you know Karl Marx's book and he was telling me, I was only a kid, all about it. But it gave me a view that was totally antonym to what I would have learned in school from the nuns. And this was a part of my insecurity, I didn't know what to believe or where I was going with it but he always thought that the only society to get married in was a communist society

LH12407 Father was a member of Communist Party in Dublin

RESP: The Woollen Mills Works Association was chosen as the guinea pig in Ireland for entry to E.C., in other words they employed Garret Fitzgerald. Garret Fitzgerald was the first one, he was a young man who was working, what was Garrett doing? He may have been working for Aerlingus, I think he was, and he was asked to do this for a fee, to go around to different industries and the first one, the guinea pig industry and I am open to correction on this one but I think I am right, was our industry and he came down and we had to fill out a huge form before he came. And he interviewed [manager] and myself at length about it, how we were fitted to the competition from Europe. I remember the absolutely devastatingly, I suppose I was kind of a cock sure youngster and Garret was fairly cocky himself too, remember he wasn't that much older than me and he went through the figures and he said, "Yes that's a very good account, yes, you're obviously on the ball and you recognise the problems that there can be," and so forth. And he said, "What percentage efficiency do you achieve with your looms?" So I very proudly said that last week we had 85%, or something like that, and he said, "Yeah", and he said, "you have omitted something." and I said, "No 85%" and he said, "How many shifts was that on"? And I said that it was on one shift. And he said, "Well if it was on three shifts what efficiency would you have?" and I just said well we didn't work three shifts. But he said most of Europe was working three shifts and ours would be regarded as completely under-utilised

INT: Yes they could be used round the clock

RESP: Now as it happened we got to be terribly busy just after that and not alone did we go onto two shifts, but we did straight away There's no doubt about it, with that one statement changed my attitude and my view completely and we went onto three shift work.

LH14304 Woollen mills industry as guinea pig for entry into E.E.C.

RESP: I always remember we used to em, Friday night they [parents] used to go out the odd night there, and myself and aunt Anne we used to bring up the television upstairs and this was great. I remember we bought, she bought a portable television and we used to bring it upstairs and there is a big brass bed up here and the two of us used to make what do you call that stuff, Ovaltine, and she used to bring it up and we'd put the telly up at the end of the bed up on a table or whatever anyway, and we'd watch the Late Late Show. That was alsways, you always knew Friday night because you could stay up late and the Late Late Show but then something would come on bold and she'd say, "Now enough of that, enough of that!" [laughter] There would be something on and they'd start talking about something and I'd be only 7 or 8, "Now that's enough of that", she'd say and she'd turn it off! [laugher] and off it would go, something like that you know! I always remember Cheers used to be on after the Late Late Show and if you saw Cheers you were up very, very late, it was morning, that type of thing. Ah no, it was good now

INT: A good childhood

RESP: It was good, a good childhood

LH32002 The Late Late Show and controversial TV in the '70s and '80s

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